Barnes &amp; Noble founder and chairman Leonard Riggio has told the book seller he is going to try to buy the company's retail business. The news sent shares up more than 17 percent in premarket trading. Riggio said he does not want to acquire the Nook e-reader business or the company's college bookstores.

Barnes &amp; Noble CEO Mitchell Klipper told the Wall Street Journal in an interview that his company will have 450 to 500 retail locations in 10 years -- down from nearly 700 now. Still, he insisted "it's a good business model," despite competition from e-books and online retailers.

If Amazon.com wants a price war, Barnes & Noble is ready to play. The struggling real-world bookseller announced this week that it's offering an 8-gigabyte version of its Nook tablet for the same $199 price point as Amazon's Kindle Fire. Meanwhile, Apple is widely expected to unveil the iPad 3 early next month.

Purists may cringe at the loss of easy-to-read E Ink screens, but it may be time to turn the page on the e-book reader. A key analyst has slashed his sales forecast for Kindles, seeing the rise of Kindle Fires, Nook Tablets, and of course, iPads as inevitable.

Soon, you might be able to buy a new Kindle at an actual, brick-and-mortar Amazon Store. The e-commerce giant is reportedly opening its first pilot store in Seattle. It's an intriguing idea, but the real question is: Why would Amazon want to?

Tablets and e-readers were a popular gift over the holidays, so much so that the number of people who own them nearly doubled between mid-December and January, a new study finds. A report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project set to be released Monday found that 29 percent of Americans owned at least one tablet or e-reader as of the beginning of this month. That's up from 18 percent who said the same in December.

Amazon has become an surprising gadget rock star. Skeptics bet against the original Kindle, which became a blockbuster, and the Kindle Fire is the first non-iPad tablet to sell well. Next stop for Amazon's gadgeteers: smartphones.

At $499 and up, Apple's iPad may not fit in your holiday budget. But how about $199 or $249 for a slightly smaller, full-featured gadget? Barnes & Noble has its Nook Tablet; Amazon has the $199 Kindle Fire. Decisions, decisions ...

If lower prices haven't swayed you into buying an e-reader, how does a steady diet of free e-books sound? Amazon.com is introducing the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, a bonus for Amazon Prime members that lets them "borrow" an e-book from a list of hundreds once a month at no additional cost.

This isn't how Barnes & Noble wanted to write its final chapters. The liquidation of rival Borders this summer should have been an opportunity to grab market share, and it's Nook e-reader should have kept it relevant. Instead, a price war is exposing the retailer's financial shortcomings.

The Amazon.com tablet is finally happening. The online retailer showed off its Android-powered device this morning. Kindle Fire should be a hot item this holiday season, but let's go ahead and break this down into five important takeaways, as you ponder the decision to buy or pass on Amazon's latest gadget.

The death of bookstore chain Borders begs the question: Is there still a place in the Internet-dominated market for brick-and-mortar booksellers and the value they add? Independent bookstores thinks so, and the numbers in the American Booksellers Association, believe it or not, are growing.

Liberty Media, the conglomerate controlled by John Malone, made a $1 billion bid Thursday to buy Barnes & Noble. The bricks-and-mortar bookstore business is declining everywhere, so for Malone's gamble is to pay off, the Nook will have to gain some ground against Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle.

It has been a tumultuous year for Barnes & Noble, the country's largest bookseller, and its quarterly earnings report reflects that. Total sales for the quarter were $1.9 billion, a bit less of a gain than analysts had predicted, while earnings were a net loss of $12.6 million, also worse than expected.

Borders, the nation's second-largest bookstore chain, has struggled for years due to competition from both fellow bricks-and-mortar outlets and online booksellers. It's latest move to combat that is an offer to match the competition's prices -- but the program's limits doom it failure.

iPhone and e-Book users may be feeling a bit more liberated, following an announcement Monday that loosens the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provisions. Basically, the ruling means folks can legally disable the restrictive software controls on devices like Apple's iPhone or Amazon's Kindle.

The latest frenzy about online copyright issues has arisen over Flipboard, a remarkable iPad app that takes feeds from Facebook and Twitter and pulls the content from their links into an easy-to-read and eye-poppingly attractive magazine format. It could revolutionize the online news business, and not a moment to soon.

FusionOne, a top provider of backup and synchronization software for mobile devices, is being purchased by Synchronoss Technologies for $40 million. It's a great deal for Synchronoss -- not so good for the venture capital investors who poured $140 million into FusionOne.